When the cicadas cry

You know very well spring is upon the horizon.

The winter freeze now melting away to bring forth 

    new life.

When the cicadas cry, 

Those earsplitting sobs of joy,

My prayers seem deafened by their insistent

    blubbering.

Wailing and wailing

Never seeming satisfied.

When the cicadas cry,

You know it won't be long until they shed.

Leaving empty molds of skin once worn.

Watching as their thin sheens collapse onto the wet

    concrete. 

My body flinching away from their desolate corpses.

I'm unable to muster the strength to look, to be 

    close.

The crunch of their withered forms forcing a 

     feverish vermillion upon my flesh.

Eaten by geese, and terrorized by ants.

What the cicadas cry for is unknown.

For their salient buzzing trick you into listening,

Almost as if commanding to.

As a pedagogue once may, obsessed with the old ways

    of discipline and order before her.

Yet no matter what I do,

The cicadas parade never falters.

Their loud cries never waver.

The persistent howling prying my eyes open.

Days blurring together. 

Terrified of night, and terrified of the early dawn. 

When the cicadas cry,

I hope for spring to end.